Friday, September 28, 2012

I doubt most people are aware of an international treaty on disabilities, called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, that's being pushed in the US Senate. I wasn't until I read this story.

A group of 36 Republican senators have banded together to rebuff
any efforts to pass the Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD) before the end of the upcoming post-election, lame
duck session of Congress. This effectively throws the decision to the
113th Congress, which takes office in January, since treaty ratification
requires two-thirds approval (67 votes) in the Senate.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., attempted to pass the treaty by
unanimous consent before Congress left for recess last week, but the
effort failed when Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, swooped in to object to the
surprise move.

Why the concern?

But opponents argue the treaty would strip parents of the right
to decide what’s in the best interest of their children, including the
choice to educate them at home. Home School Legal Defense Association
founder Michael Farris told me the treaty gives homeschoolers serious
reason to be concerned: “We’re giving away the sovereignty of the
family, as well as giving away the sovereignty of America.”

Among its other issues, the CRPD doesn’t define “disability,”
which it says is an “evolving concept.” It also includes the phrase
“sexual and reproductive health,” language that some claim includes the
right to an abortion. The Vatican has already refused to sign the treaty
on the grounds that it may be used to promote abortion.

So for now it looks like the treaty is stopped, because it lacks the 67 votes necessary for passage. Senators are wise not to pass an amendment simply because it sounds good. Rather they need to realize who will be interpreting it's provisions and the impact of the those interpretations. If the UN or similar international organizations are involved, "buyer beware."

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60%
saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news
fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years,
when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had
been in years prior to 2004.

The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept.
6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time
high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation
of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared
with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views
-- 20 percentage points -- is by far the highest Gallup has recorded
since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the
media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years
prior to 2004 -- as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three
times in the 1970s.

This year's decline in media trust is driven by independents and
Republicans. The 31% and 26%, respectively, who express a great deal or
fair amount of trust are record lows and are down significantly from
last year. Republicans' level of trust this year is similar to what they
expressed in the fall of 2008, implying that they are especially
critical of election coverage.

Trust is lowest among Republicans and then Independents. Not surprising Democrats are most trusting of the media. The numbers are 26, 31, and 58 respectively.

More broadly, Republicans continue to express the least trust in the
media, while Democrats express the most. Independents' trust fell below
the majority level in 2004 and has continued to steadily decline.

I found Gallup's summary of implications very interesting.

Implications
Americans are clearly down on the news media this election year, with
a record-high six in 10 expressing little or no trust in the mass
media's ability to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. This
likely reflects the continuation of the trend seen in recent years,
combined with the increased negativity toward the media that election
years tend to bring. This is particularly consequential at a time when
Americans need to rely on the media to learn about the platforms and
perspectives of the two candidates vying to lead the country for the
next four years.

The lower level of interest in news about national politics during
this election year may also reflect the level of interest in the
presidential election specifically. This survey was conducted
immediately after the conclusion of both political conventions and thus
may indicate the level of attention paid to those events in particular.
Since this survey was conducted, Democrats' enthusiasm about voting has swelled nationally and in swing states.

On a broad level, Americans' high level of distrust in the media
poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged
citizenry. Media sources must clearly do more to earn the trust of
Americans, the majority of whom see the media as biased
one way or the other. At the same time, there is an opportunity for
others outside the "mass media" to serve as information sources that
Americans do trust.

This tells me that there is a strong liberal media bias that is
driving the political process and it "poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged citizenry."

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Our universities our known for being overwhelmingly liberal in their orientation. In some respects they are one of the least diverse places. A sad commentary given their trade in ideas. That's an article which points this out.

Unless you believe that
ever-expanding government programs and centrally planned economies are
the solution to all of life's contingencies and social problems you will
not likely get a faculty position in the humanities, social sciences,
or education at an American college or university. A prevailing myth in
America is that our colleges and universities are bastions of diversity.
This is laughable. To believe the diversity myth one must ignore the
fact that American higher education seems to care less about students
being introduced to diverse ideas and perspectives. When American
colleges talk "diversity" they only seem to mean it along the axis of
race, gender, and class. The notion that a robust learning community
requires students be exposed to multiple perspectives has no value in
the modern academy. What matters today on most campuses is intellectual
homogeneity—also known as tribal "group think."

Two surveys, studies point this out.

In the August issue the journal Inside Higher Ed, a large survey of psychologists reported the following:

“Just over 37 percent of those surveyed said that, given
equally qualified candidates for a job, they would support the hiring
of a liberal candidate over a conservative candidate. Smaller
percentages agreed that a ‘conservative perspective’ would negatively
influence their odds of supporting a paper for inclusion in a journal or
a proposal for a grant.”

In another major study,
research by Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers demonstrates that social
psychologists, for example, openly admit they would bypass conservatives
in the hiring process. When the authors surveyed a large number of
social and personality psychologists they discovered several
not-so-surprising facts:

“First, although only 6 percent described themselves as
conservative ‘overall,’ there was more diversity of political opinion on
economic issues and foreign policy. Second, respondents significantly
underestimated the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues.
Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their
political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, conservatives are right
to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social
and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against
openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the
more they said they would discriminate.”

What's the moral of the story? It seems that there is proven
discrimination against conservatives in America's colleges and
universities and this will not likely change anytime soon without
radical intervention. Will colleges and universities be as proactive in
securing intellectual diversity as they have been for racial and gender
diversity? Do we need affirmative action hiring programs for
non-liberals and progressives because conservatives are not given access
to faculty opportunities? If so, that's something that even President
Obama might truly call “forward.”

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Here's an interesting interview with an Episcopal priest who lost his faith in seminary but then came
back to it.

The Rev. John Liebler, an Episcopal priest, lost his
faith in an ironic place: seminary. Studying for the priesthood in the
late 1970s, Liebler was inundated with a theological liberalism that
left him believing that Christianity, and all religion, was just a
mirror we hold up to our own wishes rather than a window through which
we see true spiritual realities. After a few years pastoring, he finally
realized his spiritual emptiness.

What was it like losing his faith.

Liebler: It was exceedingly painful. Most people who go through a
time of doubt or loss of faith struggle with a sense of emptiness and
meaninglessness. For a pastor, who must preach every week and speak
about God with parishioners, there is an additional sense of dishonesty.

How did he come back to God?

Liebler: I had initially come to faith in an Anglican sacramental
tradition, enlivened by the charismatic renewal. So we had both the
beauty and history of the liturgy along with a powerful sense of the
Holy Spirit working among us. I gradually lost my faith through the
liberal-progressive vision of Christianity taught in college and
seminary.

After struggling on my own for a time, I confided in my then Bishop,
Rev. John Howe of Orlando. He encouraged me to read books such as Josh
McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict and the writings of
other Christian evangelical scholars. As I read, I was overwhelmed with
the convincing proofs they set forth for things like the Bible's
reliability, the deity of Jesus Christ, his miracles, and his
resurrection from the dead. I had heard none of this in seminary. It was
the assurance I needed that Christianity really was about truth and not
the wishful thinking of human beings.

Yet it was more than reading. As an experiment, I began to preach and
pray "as if" it were true, as Bishop Howe suggested. I witnessed
incredible changes in my life and in the lives of others that resulted
from this holy experiment. My faith returned slowly, like the blooming
of a flower. I really credit God's use of the evangelical Gospel vision
of Bishop John Howe with leading me back to faith.

He has an interesting perspective on liberalism, what's known as classical liberalism, a good thing, rather than by modern liberalism and why is it important.

Liebler: ...I want Christians to discover true classical
liberalism and the reform movements it birthed in Christendom. Or, to
put it differently, I want Christians to reclaim the truths in the Bible
that many conservatives seem to ignore, because they seem too
"liberal"- truths such as God's commands for us to love our neighbors,
care for the poor, and pray for our enemies.

Classical liberalism is essentially the idea that individual human
beings have intrinsic value, and that scholarly study, guided by the
Holy Spirit, and unencumbered by church traditions, is a holy
enterprise. This understanding emerged in Western thought in the
Renaissance, and it gave rise to the Protestant Reformation. Two
centuries later, in the Enlightenment, these same concepts would give
birth to modern science. They would give rise to the understandings
enshrined in our Declaration of Independence that all people are created
equal and ought to enjoy religious and political freedom. Classical
liberalism held that these rights are "inalienable," given by "the
Creator." This strand of liberalism was the force that led to the
founding of the American Republic.

But in contrast to the American Revolution that rooted political
liberalism in the truths of the Scriptures, the French Revolution
rejected God and the church and resulted in a much bloodier, ruthless,
atheistic, and ultimately unsuccessful revolution.

What's biblical liberalism?

Liebler: Liberalism, like any philosophy, was initially a complex of
ideas that had theological, political, and social applications. In other
words, those Christians who believed in freedom and equality began to
see such injustices as slavery as violations not only of liberal
principles, but also of the Scriptures themselves. This led men like
William Wilberforce in England, a devout follower of Jesus Christ, to
spend his lifetime fighting against slavery, a battle that was
eventually won. It led pastors like John Wesley, working with poor dock
workers in Savannah, Georgia, to discourage alcohol and to develop
"Sunday School," which taught literacy using the Bible as the principal
textbook.

Social reform movements for women's suffrage and the civil rights
movement as well as the pro-life movement are all based in liberalism
–the idea that every human being has intrinsic rights – but this form of
liberalism is tied closely to the Bible and finds the source of those
rights in God. These liberal reform movements did enormous good. Most
Americans do not know that in the early 20th Century, most British
evangelicals were considered liberals!

It's when you divorce liberalism from its roots in Scripture that you
begin to see movements that advance abortion and same-sex marriage as
"rights." If you take liberalism without the Bible, these movements are
the logical results. But if you believe that the freedom of human beings
is not absolute, but is limited by the guidance of the Holy Scriptures,
then these movements are outside the bounds of Christian understanding.

That is why I believe there is a desperate need for traditional
Christians to reclaim liberalism as one of the reform movements within
genuine, Biblical Christianity.

What's the impact of biblical liberalism?

Liebler: Take the movement to stop human trafficking in
the sex trade and forced labor industries. This movement has been
largely led by Christian organizations such as International Justice
Mission and the Salvation Army along with many smaller but equally
devoted ministries. They are seeing thousands of men and women freed
from modern-day slavery and given real opportunity for the future. There
is still much to be done. And only recently have secular liberals
awakened to this issue.

How does biblical liberalism differ from the liberalism taught in liberal seminaries?

Liebler: As I mentioned, liberalism is a movement that was born in
the Renaissance, and really arose in force during the Enlightenment. You
had thinkers such as John Locke who wrote about human rights being
rooted in the existence of a Creator.

But there were others who divorced those rights form any supernatural
source. This was a time in which people in Europe were disgusted by a
long history of religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. Many
wanted to divorce human rights from any religious doctrine. They taught
instead, albeit a bit irrationally, that the rights of freedom and
equality were intrinsic to humans and not the gift of any Creator. Some
of the roots of today's liberalism come from this atheistic and
anti-Christian vision. It is this branch of liberalism-without-God that
gave birth to liberal theology.

Whereas classical liberalism believed in opposing oppressive or
illegitimate authority (such as the American colonists opposing the
tyrannical rule of King George III), anti-Christian liberalism believes
in the right to reject all authority. That means the Scriptures
themselves began to be rejected as a form of authority.

This kind of thinking emerged out of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, as the universities digested the writings of Freud, Darwin,
and Marx. It first influenced theological scholarship through higher
criticism, which in turn infiltrated the seminaries. Theologians who
followed this strand of thinking felt free, in a sense, to create their
own theology apart from the Scriptures. That is what I encountered in
seminary. In a sense, we were taught that it is okay to take the parts
of the Scriptures we like, and leave the rest. The Scriptures are not
the authority; we are.

This is the opposite of biblical liberalism which finds its very
source and power in the fact that a Benevolent Authority who himself
designed us with free will is the foundation of all real freedom and
liberty, cares for the poor and oppressed, and calls us to be agents of
liberation. He conveys these principles to us chiefly through the
Scriptures.

How does one know the difference between good versus bad liberalism?

Liebler: The first principal is to commit yourself not only to Jesus
Christ as your personal savior but also to Him as your Lord and Master.
As one submitted to Christ, allow no political or philosophical
viewpoint to define your identity or to claim your loyalty. Second, let
the Scriptures in their entirety speak judgment upon your life. If that
judgment seems to be correcting ideas from the right or the left, so be
it. Let Christ be your master, not a political philosophy.

Finally, take those biblically inspired injunctions and work to enact
them in the world. If Christians today would follow this prescription
rather than being hijacked by one political party or another, I believe
we would see a new movement of God's power and wisdom applied to the
social problems we face in our nation. The result would be increased
hope, healing, and freedom to countless people far deeper and wider than
any government program can offer.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Here's an interesting post by David Gelernter, conservative author and professor of computer science at Yale.

He is trying to understand why President Obama is doing so well in the polls, despite being a poor president and facing such a bad economy.

He says the seeds were, are being sown in our education system which is redefining what America is all about. As a result Obama's collectivist, more leftist values are resonating with more people in the US.

He thinks Romney still wins but conservatives need to realize the battle that's going on for our culture.

There is a mystery about this election. The slanted national press
and Romney’s weaknesses are well understood, but a large gap separates
these explanations from the fact that needs explaining: this election
will be close. How is that possible when Obama has shown himself to be
the worst president in modern history? And when Romney (on the other
hand) is unexciting but safe, serious, solid—just the right sort of man
to shelter all sorts of tempest-tost Americans in a storm?

...The press is slanted, but everyone knows that. What really matters is that American culture is slanted.

...Romney will win this election. But the
wacko-left Culture Machine won’t fall silent; the schools and colleges
won’t suddenly become patriotic, serious, politically neutral. The
entertainment industry won’t discover open-mindedness regarding
Judeo-Christianity and the Bible. Nor will mainstream churches and
liberal synagogues suddenly catch on to the moral and spiritual
greatness of America. Unless conservatives start taking education and
culture seriously, an election day will arrive in which the outcome is
never in doubt, because at least 51 percent of the electorate has been
trained which way to vote. At which point the GOP might as well close
shop and take the rest of the century off.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Here's an interesting, humorous take on Romney's comments on welfare dependency and who they vote for by John Hinderaker at Powerline.

Many conservatives have long suspected that Mitt Romney is not really
one of us. I have never agreed with this assessment; instead, I think
Romney is a solid conservative who doesn’t come across as a
fire-breather because of his lifetime as a buttoned-down businessman.
Now, Romney can thank Mother Jones for outing him for what he really is:
a true conservative.

In a one-minute video clip now being touted by those hostile to
Romney as a blow to his campaign, Romney points out that many
Americans–he uses the shorthand number 47%, which overstates the
case–have little incentive to vote for him because they don’t pay
(significant) taxes and they get money from the government. So it turns
out that Romney has the same opinion of Obama’s supporters that Obama
does, as demonstrated by his campaign’s infamous Julia cartoons: Obama, too, thinks his supporters are a bunch of helpless dependents.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Here's a sobering article on our financial crisis or as some would say, looming financial crisis.

It's coauthored by several leading economists and former government officials.

Where are we now?

Did you know that annual spending by
the federal government now exceeds the 2007 level by about $1 trillion?
With a slow economy, revenues are little changed. The result is an
unprecedented string of federal budget deficits, $1.4 trillion in 2009,
$1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and another $1.2 trillion
on the way this year. The four-year increase in borrowing amounts to
$55,000 per U.S. household.
The amount of debt is one thing. The
burden of interest payments is another. The Treasury now has a
preponderance of its debt issued in very short-term durations, to take
advantage of low short-term interest rates. It must frequently refinance
this debt which, when added to the current deficit, means Treasury must
raise $4 trillion this year alone. So the debt burden will explode when
interest rates go up...

The government, the Fed is acting irresponsible, spending or creating money we don't have.

Did you know that the Federal Reserve
is now giving money to banks, effectively circumventing the
appropriations process? To pay for quantitative easing—the purchase of
government debt, mortgage-backed securities, etc.—the Fed credits banks
with electronic deposits that are reserve balances at the Federal
Reserve. These reserve balances have exploded to $1.5 trillion from $8
billion in September 2008.
The Fed now pays 0.25% interest on
reserves it holds. So the Fed is paying the banks almost $4 billion a
year. If interest rates rise to 2%, and the Federal Reserve raises the
rate it pays on reserves correspondingly, the payment rises to $30
billion a year. Would Congress appropriate that kind of money to
give—not lend—to banks?
The Fed's policy of keeping interest
rates so low for so long means that the real rate (after accounting for
inflation) is negative, thereby cutting significantly the real income of
those who have saved for retirement over their lifetime.

And government expands and grows bigger by day.

The issue is not merely how much we
spend, but how wisely, how effectively. Did you know that the federal
government had 46 separate job-training programs? Yet a 47th for green
jobs was added, and the success rate was so poor that the Department of
Labor inspector general said it should be shut down. We need to get much
better results from current programs, serving a more carefully targeted
set of people with more effective programs that increase their
opportunities.
Did you know that funding for federal
regulatory agencies and their employment levels are at all-time highs?
In 2010, the number of Federal Register pages devoted to proposed new
rules broke its previous all-time record for the second consecutive
year. It's up by 25% compared to 2008. These regulations alone will
impose large costs and create heightened uncertainty for business and
especially small business.

It's getting worse than Greece.

President Obama's budget will raise
the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to 80.4% in two years, about double its
level at the end of 2008, and a larger percentage point increase than
Greece from the end of 2008 to the beginning of this year.
Under the president's budget, for
example, the debt expands rapidly to $18.8 trillion from $10.8 trillion
in 10 years. The interest costs alone will reach $743 billion a year,
more than we are currently spending on Social Security, Medicare or
national defense, even under the benign assumption of no inflationary
increase or adverse bond-market reaction. For every one percentage point
increase in interest rates above this projection, interest costs rise
by more than $100 billion, more than current spending on veterans'
health and the National Institutes of Health combined.
Worse, the unfunded long-run
liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid add tens of
trillions of dollars to the debt, mostly due to rising real benefits per
beneficiary. Before long, all the government will be able to do is
finance the debt and pay pension and medical benefits. This spending
will crowd out all other necessary government functions.
What does this spending and debt mean
in the long run if it is not controlled? One result will be ever-higher
income and payroll taxes on all taxpayers that will reach over 80% at
the top and 70% for many middle-income working couples.

What's at stake? The ability of the government to defend our nation in the future.

Suppose you were offered the job of
Treasury secretary a few months from now. Would you accept? You would
confront problems that are so daunting even Alexander Hamilton would
have trouble preserving the full faith and credit of the United States.
Our first Treasury secretary famously argued that one of a nation's
greatest assets is its ability to issue debt, especially in a crisis. We
needed to honor our Revolutionary War debt, he said, because the debt
"foreign and domestic, was the price of liberty."
History has reconfirmed Hamilton's
wisdom. As historian John Steele Gordon has written, our nation's
ability to issue debt helped preserve the Union in the 1860s and defeat
totalitarian governments in the 1940s. Today, government officials are
issuing debt to finance pet projects and payoffs to interest groups, not
some vital, let alone existential, national purpose.
The problems are close to being
unmanageable now. If we stay on the current path, they will wind up
being completely unmanageable, culminating in an unwelcome explosion and
crisis.

That's the answer?

The fixes are blindingly obvious.
Economic theory, empirical studies and historical experience teach that
the solutions are the lowest possible tax rates on the broadest base,
sufficient to fund the necessary functions of government on balance over
the business cycle; sound monetary policy; trade liberalization;
spending control and entitlement reform; and regulatory, litigation and
education reform. The need is clear. Why wait for disaster? The future
is now.

The kicker is spending control and entitlement reform. The problem is politicians don't want to say no.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Rick Warren, an evangelical, megachurch pastor and the person President Obama had give the prayer at his inauguration, told his congregration to vote their biblical values in the upcoming election. They shouldn't be apologetic for doing so nor should they vote for someone just because they like them.

"You don't need to apologize for voting for a Christian worldview
which stands up for the sanctity of life, the sanctity of sex and the
sanctity of marriage. You don't need to apologize for that because
everybody votes what they believe," Warren told thousands of Saddleback
Church attendees at the launch of a new sermon series.

The
Southern California pastor said those three issues (life, sex, marriage)
are non-negotiables for Christians. While they may disagree on the
economy or health care, what believers must be firm on is protecting the
unborn, viewing sex as holy, and protecting traditional marriage.

"If
you call yourself a Christian, you need to line up with what God says
is the original intent of all three of these things," he preached.

Warren,
a registered independent, made it clear that he has and never will
endorse a candidate for president. At the same time, he called on
Christians to make decisions based on the truth – God's Word.

Why? Because it's the "only source that will never lie to you," he said.

Both political parties released vastly different
platforms. The GOP platform supports the sanctity of human life and
traditional marriage and includes stronger anti-pornography language.
Democrats, meanwhile, support "a woman's right to make decisions
regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion," and, for
the first time ever, same-sex marriage in their platform.

In his message Sunday, Warren told Saddleback members to study the platforms of the parties.

"'Well,
I like that guy' – that's a stupid reason to vote for somebody," Warren
stated. "You need to know their worldview. Read their platforms. And
then vote your worldview."

He pointed out four anti-Christian worldviews are in play and had interesting insight into socialism - it's the result of making the government god - the government is everything and has all the answers.

He warned that there are four anti-Christian worldviews: materialism, hedonism, individualism and collectivism/socialism.

"People
who don't know God make government god," Warren said of socialism. "The
highest thing they can think of to make the world a better place is not
the church, it's not God, it's government."

"What I've discovered
is this: politics is the religion of people who don't know God," he
said to applause. "They treat it as everything. Again, there's nothing
wrong with politics; it's just not the savior."

The longtime
pastor tried to instill courage in the congregation, knowing that some
of their stances on issues are not popular with the public.

The sanctity of life, sex and marriage are "three aspects of the Christian worldview that are hated by this world," he noted.

I think he touches on the biggest problem facing Christians -- timidity or fear, lack of courage.

"Most Christians clam up and shut up because they're afraid to even stand up."

But
he reminded them that they should build their lives on Word of God and
not on the opinions of others and that they should fear God's
disapproval more than people's disapproval.

"If ever there was a
message that you need in today's culture, God would say this to you
about your faith – don't be afraid, keep on speaking, do not be silent,"
the Saddleback pastor said.

"Everybody else is telling you their worldview. Why should Christians cower in cowardice?"

The U.S. Department of Justice filed two petitions
Tuesday as part of their challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act,
asking the Supreme Court to review cases that could ultimately lead to
the court overturning the law that defines marriage as between and man
and a woman.

The specific part of the law that attorneys for the Justice
Department want the court to focus on is Section 3, which they say
violate the rights of legally married same-sex couples, arguing that it
treats them differently than married heterosexual couples.

...Additionally, the Justice Department also wants the court to review a
case involving six same-sex married couples and a widower from various
states that were denied federal benefits. In all, the U.S. Supreme Court
has been asked to review four cases that could eventually lead to part
or all of DOMA being ruled unconstitutional given that federal courts in
several states have issued such opinions.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

There was an interesting column by Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute on explosion of government entitlement programs.

What is monumentally new about the American
state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects,
manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has
become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes
more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and
services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending
more than for all other ends combined.

The growth of entitlement payments over
the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government
transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars,
according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was
almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and
population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727%
over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a
year.

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over
$2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these
entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in
America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average
entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

That's a massive amount of wealth transfer.

A
half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has
completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal
administration as these were understood by all previous generations.
Until 1960 the accepted task of the federal government, in keeping with
its constitutional charge, was governing. The overwhelming share of
federal expenditures was allocated to some limited public services and
infrastructure investments and to defending the republic against enemies
foreign and domestic.
In 1960, entitlement payments accounted
for well under a third of the federal government's total outlays—about
the same fraction as in 1940, when the Great Depression was still
shaping American life. But over subsequent decades, entitlements as a
percentage of total federal spending soared. By 2010 they accounted for
just about two-thirds of all federal spending, with all other
responsibilities of the federal government making up barely one-third.
In a very real sense, entitlements have turned American governance
upside-down.

This expansion of government raises questions about where we're going as a nation.

The proud self-reliance that struck
Alexis de Tocqueville in his visit to the U.S. in the early 1830s
extended to personal finances. The American "individualism" about which
he wrote did not exclude social cooperation—the young nation was a
hotbed of civic associations and voluntary organizations. But in an
environment bursting with opportunity, American men and women viewed
themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own
achievements—a novel outlook at that time, markedly different from the
prevailing attitudes of the Old World (or at least the Continent).

The corollaries
of this American ethos were, on the one hand, an affinity for personal
enterprise and industry and, on the other, a horror of dependency and
contempt for anything that smacked of a mendicant mentality. Although
many Americans in earlier times were poor, even people in fairly
desperate circumstances were known to refuse help or handouts as an
affront to their dignity and independence. People who subsisted on
public resources were known as "paupers," and provision for them was a
local undertaking. Neither beneficiaries nor recipients held the
condition of pauperism in high regard.

American's resistance to more government is being overcome.

Overcoming America's historic cultural
resistance to government entitlements has been a long and formidable
endeavor. But as we know today, this resistance did not ultimately prove
an insurmountable obstacle to establishing mass public entitlements and
normalizing the entitlement lifestyle. The U.S. is now on the verge of a
symbolic threshold: the point at which more than half of all American
households receive and accept transfer benefits from the government.
From cradle to grave, a treasure chest of government-supplied benefits
is there for the taking for every American citizen—and exercising one's
legal rights to these many blandishments is now part of the American way
of life.

The ever present question is eventually who will pay for it.

As Americans opt to reward themselves
ever more lavishly with entitlement benefits, the question of how to pay
for these government transfers inescapably comes to the fore. Citizens
have become ever more broad-minded about the propriety of tapping new
sources of finance for supporting their appetite for more entitlements.
The taker mentality has thus ineluctably gravitated toward taking from a
pool of citizens who can offer no resistance to such schemes: the
unborn descendants of today's entitlement-seeking population.
Among policy
makers in Washington today, it is very close to received wisdom that
America's national hunger for entitlement benefits has placed the
country on a financially untenable trajectory, with the federal budget
generating ultimately unbearable expenditures and levels of public debt.
The bipartisan 2010 Bowles/Simpson Commission put this view plainly:
"Our nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path."

When will that does happen it's hard to say. Whenever it does happen it will be very painful for many people; if for no other reason than many people will believe they're entitled to it and nobody has right to take it away from them.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Moments after President Obama spoke at his convention, reality was taking hold. The latest jobless and economic report brought bad news.

One headline read: "Grim jobs market confronts Obama, Fed". The economy is weak and a big problem for an incumbent president.

Jobs growth slowed sharply in August, setting the stage for the
Federal Reserve to pump additional money into the sluggish economy next
week and dealing a blow to President Barack Obama as he seeks
re-election.

Nonfarm payrolls increased only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday.

While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from
8.3 percent in July, that was because so many Americans gave up the
hunt for work. The survey of households from which the jobless rate is
derived actually showed a drop in employment.

In addition, President Obama's supporters are not energized. Time columnist Joe Klein wasn't impressed.

The President gave a fine speech Thursday night. His vision of the
country is much closer to the place where I live–and I daresay where
most Americans live–than Mitt Romney’s. It is an America that includes
truck drivers and teachers and auto workers as well as Romney’s beloved
entrepreneurs. Obama laid out the case against Romney’s constricted
vision in a very effective way: “If you have a cold, they say take two
tax cuts and roll back some regulations and see us in the morning.” He
was, of course, defter, funnier, more profound than Romney. He told
basic truths like “global warming is not a hoax.” He made no absurd
promises. He recognized the difficulty of our situation. He acknowledged
mistakes. But he did not close the deal. The speech disappointed me,
and I’m not quite sure why.

But I still wonder: what is he going to do with his second term?
What are the next things we need to do as a nation? Why did he limit his
defense of the Affordable Care Act to a sentence or two about a girl
with a pre-existing condition in Phoenix?
Why didn’t he say more about the revival in manufacturing that seems
just to be beginning? Why didn’t he get more specific, and dreamy, about
the whiz-bang new energy products that are being developed by basic
research government agencies like ARPA-E? He talked about goals–why did
none of them seem big? Why can’t I remember any of them? Why didn’t he
talk about the world’s largest solar farm, underway in Nevada? Why
didn’t he envision an America–happening right now, by the way–where
people can put solar tiles on their roofs, take care of their own
electrical needs and sell the surplus to their local utilities? Or
something else. Whatever. Something to hang onto and aim for....

But I’m continually disappointed by Obama’s inability to make the
domestic policy decisions he’s made come alive to the American people,
to show us what sort of country we’re going to be living in when we
emerge from this mess, to show how–necessarily–we are going to be
different when we come out the other side.

When the economy is bad and your supporters aren't energized that's not a good sign.

One comment which President Obama made last night was very accurate. He said:

"But when all is said and done, when you pick up that ballot to vote,
you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation. Over the
next few years, big decisions will be made in Washington, on jobs, the
economy; taxes and deficits; energy, education; war and peace, decisions
that will have a huge impact on our lives and our children’s lives for
decades to come.

And on every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties.

It will be a choice between two different paths for America.

A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future."

Yes, the President and Romney have fundamentally different views of how the world works. The president definitely has a collectivist orientation as we can see from his actions the last four years. That government can and should solve the economic and social problems confronting us. It can do this through social and economic engineering. Having bureaucrats run the show. The goal is equal outcomes. That means redistributing wealth among other things.

The other vision says, yes government is a vital institution, beneficial institution when it functions within it's proper jurisdiction. It's to provide the environment for every person to develop and utilize his or her God-given abilities and talents. It's not to guarantee equal results. It's to protect the vulnerable and less fortunate. But not to take over the roles and responsibilities of parents and families. It's to protect the God-given institution of marriage and the sanctity of human life. It's to empower civil institutions and organizations not consume and control them. The free market system is a blessing not a curse. Government's role is that of a referee, ensuring the rules are followed, and fairly enforced. The laws of the land favor neither the wealthy nor the poor. All stand equal before the law.

The realization of President Obama's vision is less freedom not more. Less prosperity not more. Why? Because they're based on faulty understanding of the nature of man and his actions as a economic, political, and moral being.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

What a fiasco. References to God and Israel were dropped from the Democrat platform in Charlotte. The controversy generated caused party leaders to reverse course and amend references to God and Israel back into the platform. But as you can see from this C-SPAN tape, the two-thirds requirement for new amendment was clearly not met yet the presiding officer ruled that it was anyway.

It was said this was an oversight, yet the Democrat Platform was decided last month. It was an oversight only in that it caused a controversy and an excuse was looked for.

The original exclusion of any mention of God (and then only in reference to "God-given talents.") and the floor opposition to restoring reference to God speaks volumes about the philosophical, theological, moral perspective of leaders and activists in the Democrat Party. God is an afterthought and even then not a very welcomed one at that. It highlights a heightened, aggressive secularism.

The Democrat Party's platform is now four square on the side of a radical, leftist social vision for America. They want gay "marriage" for all of us. (When you redefine marriage legally that affects the entire society.) And they want us to embrace abortion by having us all pay for it.

The 2012 Democratic party will officially adopt an extreme position
on the issue of abortion on Tuesday. According to a copy of the party platform, which was released online just before midnight on Monday, "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay."

That last part--"regardless of ability to pay"--is an endorsement of
taxpayer-funded abortions, a policy that President Obama has personally
endorsed. Obama wants Medicaid to pay directly for elective abortions, and Obamacare will allow beneficiaries
to use federal subsidies to purchase health care plans that cover
elective abortions. According to a 2009 Quinnipiac poll, 72 percent of
voters oppose public funding of abortion and 23 percent support it. In
other words, public funding of abortion--a policy President Obama
actively supports--is as unpopular as banning abortion in the case of rape,
a policy on which the media have focused their attention over the past
two weeks despite the fact that neither presidential candidate supports
it.

The 2012 Democratic party also endorses an unrestricted right to
abortion-on-demand. According to the platform, on the issue of abortion
"there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way." In
2003, Obama was asked if he was pro-choice on abortion "in all situations including the late-term thing." Obama replied: "I'm pro-choice."

In 1992, then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton tried to
soften the party's image on abortion by expressing his desire to make
abortion "safe, legal, and rare." Although the Democratic party
platforms in 2000 and 2004 stated the party's goal is to make abortion
"rare," the 2012 platform makes no such claim. "In 2000, the Democratic
platform said the party's goal was 'to make abortion less necessary and
more rare,'" Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe
last week. "The 2004 platform declared, 'Abortion should be safe,
legal, and rare.' But even calling for abortion to be 'rare' is now too
much for the Democrats' platform committee, which deleted the word in 2008." The word "rare" did not make a comeback in 2012.

What's interesting on the abortion front is the country is moving in a decidedly pro-life direction while the Democrat Party is aggressively moving in the other direction.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Here's a very revealing ad for the Democrat National Convention which says, in part, "The government's the only thing we all belong to." So we belong to the government. The ad mentions clubs and churches but only to contrast them to the importance of government. Talk about a worldview defining statement. Statism, socialism is the order of the day. The implications are then quite clear regarding government policy regarding welfare and a wide range of other government programs.

The Democratic Party is embracing statism, socialism at just the time it's entering a crisis point in Europe. It doesn't work and can't be afforded.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The Hill, a nonpartisan, political news source, did a poll on what Americans think about the economy and whether President Obama deserves to be re-elected. The news was not good for the Obama campaign.

They found that a majority of voters believe we're worse off than we were four years ago and just 40% of voters believe President Obama deserves re-election.

A majority of voters believe the country is worse off today than it
was four years ago and that President Obama does not deserve reelection,
according to a new poll for The Hill.

Fifty-two percent of likely
voters say the nation is in “worse condition” now than in September
2008, while 54 percent say Obama does not deserve reelection based
solely on his job performance.

Only 31 percent of voters believe the nation is in “better condition,”
while 15 percent say it is “about the same,” the poll found. Just 40
percent of voters said Obama deserves reelection.

The results
highlight the depth of voter dissatisfaction confronting Obama as he
makes his case for a second term at this week’s Democratic National
Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

They also strongly suggest Democrats
need to convince voters the election should be a choice between Obama
and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, rather than a referendum on the
president.
Obama’s biggest problem remains voter unhappiness with his handling of the economy.

I've felt that the race is ultimately Romney's to lose. Can Romney lose? Certainly. A lot can happen between now and November 6th.

Monday, September 3, 2012

It sounds like the left is starting to get nervous about the election. Leftist film producer Michael Moore is suggesting people get ready to start saying President Romney.

Here's an interesting interview with Moore. It gives insight into the mindset of many on the left. In the link, you can hear the broader interview with Moore.

Moore is very nervous about the election. One, the money on the right from the "billionaries" will swamp Obama. And second, the left is demoralized. They will certainly vote for Obama but won't work hard to get him re-elected.

Filmmaker Michael Moore joined HuffPost Live Thursday and predicted
that the influence of money in politics would lift Mitt Romney to
victory over President Barack Obama in November.

"Mitt Romney is going to raise more money than Barack Obama. That
should guarantee his victory," Moore told host Josh Zepps. "I think
people should start to practice the words 'President Romney.' To assume
that the other side are just a bunch of ignoramuses who are supported by
people who believe that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago
is to completely misjudge the opposition."

Moore said he believes that if the election were conducted "American
Idol"-style, and Americans were able to vote from their couches, Obama
"would win hands down."

"That's not what's gonna happen," he told Zepps. "This election's
going to be decided on who gets out the most people that day. Who's up
at four in the morning, making sure that dozens, hundreds, thousands of
people in their communities are getting out to vote. And the Republican
machine that is set up and the money behind it to guarantee [what] is
really the only important thing -- turnout on that day -- that's what
looks pretty scary here."

Certainly, it takes money to run a campaign but just as important is morale. He realizes Obama is in trouble on both of these grounds. This strikes me as 2008 in reverse.